


two slow dancers, last ones out

by opinionhaver69



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene, alternate description: augustine suffers with post-nut clarity, profound horniness but like in a theological and emotional way mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69
Summary: Mercymorn made a noise that was almost a laugh. “Not even two hours ago you were quite the exhibitionist.”Augustine smiled thinly without opening his eyes. “Does that make you my voyeur?”--A missing scene from HtN, taking place immediately after dios apate minor.
Relationships: Augustine the First & Mercymorn the First
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	two slow dancers, last ones out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



> This doesn't align fully with the Yuletide prompt but I read your letter and the inspiration for an emotionally fraught/emotionally horny Augustine character study came to me pretty much fully formed and I just had to write it, so I hope you enjoy it anyway! :)
> 
> (Also - this probably doesn't gel particularly well with the actual conversation Harrow overhears Augustine and Mercymorn having at this point in the book, so maybe this should be considered a replacement scene rather than a missing one, strictly speaking! Alecto the Ninth is probably going to retroactively joss my account of Augustine's lyctorisation too so if you happen to be reading this in 2022: my bad, whoops)

Hours after the body of Cytherea the First had risen from its bed and attempted to murder a man in the Mithraeum’s incinerator, Augustine Alfred stepped calmly into the small and quiet chamber that had formerly been her resting place. Cytherea’s stretcher was empty now, of course, but the candles at its side still burned, their reflected flames glinting ghoulishly in the pools of dark and sticky blood that had coagulated unwitnessed in the otherwise unassuming room. The overall appearance was somewhat unfortunately dishevelled, Augustine thought, and he smiled humorlessly; with his tousled hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and the lipstick staining his collar, he, too, was dishevelled. What better place, then? Stepping carefully to avoid getting blood on his shoes, he crossed the room and settled himself smoothly down onto the unoccupied bier. 

“Really, Augustine?” came a languid voice from just beyond the doorway. It was Mercymorn, of course, trailing him unseen like an unquiet spirit, and as she spoke she moved forwards into the light, her clothing similarly disarrayed but her face unmarred and inscrutable. Like Augustine, she took pains to avoid the blood on the floor, but she didn't come any closer to the tomb. “I would have thought this to be a bit much, even for you.” 

The corner of Augustine’s mouth rose sharply as if tugged upwards by a hook. “Forgive me, won’t you, Joy?” he said, words clipped. “I wanted some time alone with my thoughts, and tonight of all nights, this seemed as good a place as any.” 

Mercymorn regarded him with eyes at once ancient and ageless, holding her head imperiously high. “And nothing is ever sacred, I suppose,” she said.

Augustine chuckled dryly. “Oh, am I disrupting the sanctity of her tomb? Her grave was already robbed, Mercy.” He glanced away from her, to the blood staining the floor. “Vandalised, too. And we have seen God himself defiled,” he said, “again, on this very night. We are _ourselves_ defiled - do you forget that we too are tombs? Need I really remind you?”

Mercymorn drew back sharply. “If you say her name again -”

“Oh, hush.” Augustine lifted a placatory hand, then dropped it again, weary. “I don’t have the energy to scrap, and least of all with you.”

Mercymorn exhaled discontentedly, then settled herself, like a bird ruffling its plumage. “Uncharacteristic,” she said eventually, after a long, tense moment.

“Quite,” said Augustine. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the wall, the long line of his neck exposed. There was dried sweat in the hollow of his throat, and beneath the sharp line of his jawbone his pulse thrummed a relentless beat. Even with his eyes closed he could sense Mercy’s presence at the door, and feel the oppressive weight of her turbulent gaze. It was all - yes, all; carotid, sweat, heartbeat, eyes - entirely hateful, he thought, hateful and alive and exhausting. He sighed, then said tiredly, “Must you stand there, perceiving me?”

Mercymorn made a noise that was almost a laugh. “Not even two hours ago you were quite the exhibitionist.” 

Augustine smiled thinly without opening his eyes. “Does that make you my voyeur?” 

A stillness. Then, Mercymorn said, her voice level, “One cannot be watched without a watcher, certainly. But that particular honour must go to John, I think. He watches over us all.”

At this, Augustine opened his eyes, then narrowed them sharply. “Yes,” he said flatly. “He does. More than we know, I’d wager.”

Mercymorn tilted her head to the side curiously. In the dim light only a sliver of her eyes was visible, a strange red-amber glimmer in the flickering candlelight. “And that is God’s purview, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, Joy,” said Augustine, joyless. “Your zealotry has not become any less wearing over the last myriad, I assure you.”

“Fortunately I can live with your negative opinion of me,” Mercymorn said crisply. “Somehow.”

“That’s the spirit, sister.” Augustine rubbed absent-mindedly at the lipstick stain on his shirt. “But John, John - my voyeur, my jailer; it’s all the same, isn’t it? We don’t know what he sees, what he knows, how much he understands - it is why we must move always in the dark, always with such subterfuge. Such a cruel, ingenious cage he keeps us in, don’t you think?”

“We signed up for it,” said Mercymorn without inflection. “Perhaps you’re right; perhaps John is the jailer. We aren’t the prisoners, though, Augustine. We’re the jails.” Her lips curled into something approaching a sneer as she repeated his earlier words: “Need I really remind you?”

Augustine brought a hand to his chest and pressed it ostentatiously to his heart. “Ouch,” he said - sardonic, but not without sincerity.

“You’ll have to excuse me the childish sentiment I am about to express,” said Mercymorn, “but you started it.” 

They were silent for a moment, Mercymorn standing rigidly in the doorway with her arms folded, Augustine slouched decadently atop the tomb of one of their own, feeling the knobs and jut of the wall's decorative inlaid bones pressing indifferently into his spine. Eventually, Augustine sighed, crossed his legs delicately at the ankles, and said, almost conversationally, “We speak so - of the watchers and the watched - and yet I don’t know how we can bear to look, sometimes. At ourselves, at each other. Our bodies more or less incorrupt, but hardly saintly, after all that. I look at you, Joy, and I quite despise that ageless face; to tell the truth, I would rather it lined, and sagging, and Cristabel and Alfred still here - oh, don’t flinch, we’ve been skirting around it all evening.”

Mercymorn uncrossed her arms, and balled her fingers into fists. Her voice wasn’t quite as steady when she said, “What’s the point of this, Augustine? This - this morbid, maudlin… We did what we did, and now we have to live with it. _Have_ been living with it, for the last ten thousand years, and adequately enough until now.”

“Live with it... yes, I suppose we must.” Augustine ran a hand through his sweat-salted hair, then shook his head grimly. “If Alfred sacrificed himself to fuel my furnace then it’s my responsibility to make sure that sacrifice was worth a damn, I know that. And a part of him is alive as long as I am, if you want to be revoltingly sentimental about it.” He laughed suddenly; the sound was hollow, and it echoed in the empty space. “I am my brother’s keeper. Isn’t that ironic?” 

Mercymorn looked nauseated, her mouth puckered as if she’d eaten something sour. “Self-loathing doesn’t look good on you, Augustine. I don’t like this.” 

“But you like to philosophise, though, don’t you, Mercy?” Augustine’s eyes contained a glimmer of humour when he looked at her, sharp and biting. “All that about _God’s purview_. Well, tell me this - is the meaning of life not to be found in its transience? Its ephemerality? Everything we feel - we felt - we felt it keenly because we knew that it would end, and that meant it was worth something. Worth savouring. Wasn’t that it?” 

“The meaning of life?” Mercymorn’s eyebrows were raised high, her expression disbelieving and scathing in equal measure. “What are you, sixteen? Smoked an illicit substance and read a book with long words in it for the first time, did you?”

Augustine dismissed this with the vague wave of a single elegant hand, too focused on the thread of his argument to be distracted by Mercy’s barbs. “I used to think it was all nonsense too, you know. But the thing is, with that looming threat of mortality all but removed, and the years behind me too plentiful to count - I am finding myself increasingly devoid of passion.” At this, Mercymorn scoffed, and Augustine waved his hand again in irritation. “Oh, carnality, that’s as easy to muster as it ever was. But don’t mistake it for the real thing, Joy. I am stagnant - inert - unfeeling. Alfred and Cristabel are dead, but we’re the real ghosts, don’t you see? They died in their prime, blazing as bright as ever, and we’ve faded. Ten thousand years and there’s nothing left but the jagged outlines of who we used to be. All edge with nothing inside.”

“Then why continue to live, if that’s how you feel?” Mercy’s voice was even again, her tone almost bored, and her fascinating eyes revealed nothing. 

“Oh, I think I’ve already answered that,” replied Augustine, matching her nonchalance. “But if nothing else - I think I’ve been holding grimly onto this life for such a long time that I’ve quite forgotten how to relinquish it.”

“I pray you remember again soon.” This could have been a dig, or it could have been meant in earnest; Mercymorn met Augustine’s gaze without flinching. 

“I rather do too,” he said gravely. “You know what it was - the kicker, the catalyst - at last, after all these years?” At Mercymorn’s blithe shrug, he continued. “It was this: I knew I’d lived entirely too long on the day I woke up and no longer had tears for him. Alfred deserved better than that. Better than me outliving my grief. If the world was just, I never would - but then, if the world was just, he would not have died, would he?” 

Mercymorn had nothing to say to this. For the briefest second, a look passed over her face - a strange look, somehow stricken and uneasy - and then it vanished as quickly as it appeared. Again inscrutable, she twisted her hand back and forth in the candlelight, examining her fingernails. Finally, she dropped her hand back down to her side and said flatly, “You’re romanticising. Alfred was exceedingly ordinary in almost all respects.”

“Ha!” Caught off guard by this, the corners of Augustine’s mouth quirked up in a smile, small but genuine. “Yes, he was, rather. But it’s been a long time, and I feel myself yearning for anything quite so beautifully ordinary as Alfred was. Oh, truly - he was the best of all my days, and Lord knows I've had plenty of them.” 

Grudgingly, Mercymorn met Augustine’s smile with the tiniest one of her own, more the suggestion of an expression than an expression in its own right. This temporary harmony held for the smallest sprinkling of seconds - an infinitesimal, perfect myriad all of its own - and then broke when Augustine pulled his gaze away and glanced ruefully down at his own rumpled clothing. “Oh, apologies, Joy, apologies for all this,” he said, his louche and lackadaisical veneer reshaping itself around him as though it had never once been disrupted. “This sudden loquaciousness - dear me, it isn’t like me at all, is it? We’ll have to put it down to _la petite mort_. Somewhat ironically, considering.”

Mercymorn snorted in a singularly unladylike fashion. “I’d give you a _grande mort_ , if I could,” she said loftily. “But speaking of - I’m not sure how you managed to pull it off, with me and John, you know. After spending so many years stewing in all that hatred.” 

Augustine arched a single eyebrow in surprise. “Oh, it isn’t hatred as much as guilt, surely you know that. You see, Joy - no matter how long it’s been, those are still her eyes in your face.” He exhaled mournfully. “And I knew damn well what she was persuading Alfred to do, didn’t I? I even thought I’d convinced him not to go through with it... we so rarely fought, after all, but I got a few punches in, and Alfred - fine cavalier that he was - let me do it, he barely even fought back. I thought…” Here, Augustine trailed off for a minute, his face eerily white and bloodless in the sepulchral chamber. “Yes, I thought I’d gotten through to him, fool that I am. And then I went to cool off, blood all over my hands - and what a godawful metaphor _that_ turned out to be. I didn’t even know if it was my blood or his, not that there was any difference there, really - and I sucked the tiniest spot off my knuckle and it happened. Just like that. I felt him coalesce inside me - such a terrible, awful feeling, I'll never forget it - and I knew he’d gone and done it anyway, even before Cristabel came and found me to tell me, breathless, half-dead herself. And that’s just as well, because if she wasn’t, in that drawn-out, dreadful moment, I would have done the job for her. I really would.”

Mercymorn stood perfectly immobile for a second. Cristabel’s eyes in her face were resplendent, shining bright and terrible like the fires in which martyrs were born. The words were Mercymorn’s, though, and they were calm and precise when she finally spoke, shattering the stillness around her. “I didn’t necessarily mean your hatred for _me_.”

“Ah.” Augustine nodded, considering this, then twisted his mouth into an ugly approximation of a smile. “Well, yes. That’s a different matter entirely. But we do what we must.” 

Mercymorn’s eyes slid shut, giving them both a temporary reprieve from seeing each other quite so starkly bared. “Yes. We do.”

“They truly were the best parts of us, you know,” Augustine said contemplatively - decisively, even, as though he'd followed the thread of his thoughts to an inevitable, if frayed, end. “They are still. I disagreed with Cristabel on almost all grounds - but even so. If we could have chosen, they should have been the ones to live, don’t you think?” 

Mercymorn opened her eyes again, but some ineffable, integral part of her had been put away, and remained shuttered. “I am not God, Augustine,” she said quietly, by way of answer. “There's only one thing I can tell you with any certainty.”

“Oh? And that is?”

“That you were wrong earlier.” She brushed a hand across her face tiredly and turned to leave, tossing her words out over her shoulder with a kind of deliberate carelessness. “You haven’t outlived your grief. You haven't even begun to. I think it’s the biggest part of you, still.”

Augustine’s fingers twitched in his lap, then curled inwards towards his palm. “No,” he said slowly, his gaze downturned. “I suppose you’re right, at that - and perhaps our grief will be all that’s left of us, eventually.” 

There was no response. Mercymorn had gone, leaving nothing behind save for unspoken regrets and the faintest disturbance in the still, dead air.


End file.
